Today we face a climate of ever increasing misdirection by popular media. This site, along with others, aims to reveal the reality of America and the loss of fact inherent to the over riding theme of our current political and social confusion: Purposeful deception.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Supreme Court To Take On Obama Healthcare Law

S. Paul note: It is curious how this hearing will take place with such proximity to the Presidential elections. This can not be a coincidence; can it?

The Supreme Court agreed on
Monday to decide the fate of President Barack Obama's healthcare law, with an
election-year ruling due by July on the U.S. healthcare system's biggest
overhaul in nearly 50 years.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman
said oral arguments would take place in March. There will be a total of 5-1/2
hours of argument. The court would be expected to rule during its current
session, which lasts through June.

The decision had been widely
expected since September, when the Obama administration asked the country's
highest court to uphold the centerpiece insurance provision and 26 of the 50
states separately asked that the entire law be struck down.

At the heart of the legal
battle is whether the U.S. Congress overstepped its powers by requiring all
Americans to buy health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty, a provision known
as the individual mandate.

Legal experts and policy
analysts said the healthcare vote may be close on the nine-member court, with
five conservatives and four liberals. It could come down to moderate
conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often casts the decisive vote.

The law, aiming to provide
medical coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans, has wide
ramifications for company costs and for the health sector, affecting health
insurers, drugmakers, device companies and hospitals.

A decision by July would
take the healthcare issue to the heart of a presidential election campaign that
ends with a vote on November 6 next year. Polls show Americans deeply divided
over the overhaul, Obama's signature domestic achievement.

A ruling striking down the
law, while Obama seeks another four-year term, would be a huge blow for him
legally and politically.

A ruling upholding the law
would vindicate Obama legally, but might make healthcare an even bigger
political issue for the leading Republican presidential candidates, all of whom
oppose it.

Norman Ornstein of the
American Enterprise Institute, a Washington
think tank, said the ruling would have a polarizing effect on the Republican
and Democratic faithful but a minimal impact on Obama's standing with
middle-of-the-road voters who often decide elections.

"My guess is that for
voters in the middle if the Supreme Court says the law is constitutional that
probably makes them a little bit happier with Obama. If they say it's unconstitutional
that may make them a little less happy," he said.

The high court could leave
in place the entire law, it could strike down the individual insurance mandate
or other provisions, it could invalidate the entire law or it could put off a
ruling on the mandate until after it has taken effect.

Also on Monday the
administration, in the latest in a string of executive moves to sidestep a
divided Congress, announced up to $1 billion for a program to support
healthcare innovation to cut costs and improve care.

WHITE HOUSE PLEASED

White House Communications
Director Dan Pfeiffer said the administration was pleased the Supreme Court
agreed to hear the case. "We know the Affordable Care Act is
constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree," he said.

Those challenging the law
also voiced optimism.

Karen Harned of the National
Federation of Independent Business said: "We are confident in the strength
of our case and hopeful that we will ultimately prevail. Our nation's
job-creators depend on a decision being reached before the harmful effects of
this new law become irreversible."

Florida Attorney General Pam
Bondi, whose state is leading the challenge to the law, said: "We are
hopeful that by June 2012 we will have a decision that protects Americans' and
individuals' liberties and limits the federal government's power."

BernsteinResearch, which
provides investment analysis, predicted the most likely outcomes were the law
being upheld or a decision being delayed until 2015.

Paul Heldman, senior analyst
at Potomac Research Group, which provides Washington policy research for the
investment community, said he still leaned toward the view that the law's
requirement that individuals buy insurance will be upheld.

"We continue to have a
high level of conviction that the Supreme Court will leave much of the health
reform law standing, even if finds unconstitutional the requirement that
individuals buy coverage," he wrote in a recent note.

After Obama signed the law
in March 2010 following a bruising political fight in Congress, the legal
battle began, with challenges by more than half of the states and others. The
Supreme Court has long been expected to have final say on the law's
constitutionality.

OTHER LANDMARKS

The administration has said
other landmark laws, such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and
the Voting Rights Act, faced similar legal challenges that all failed.

For a fully functional new
system by 2014, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said,
"It's important that we put to rest once and for all the issue that maybe
the law will disappear, maybe the law will be struck down."

The states also are
challenging the expansion of Medicaid, a federal-state partnership that provides
healthcare to poor Americans, on the grounds Congress unconstitutionally forced
the expansion on the states by threatening to withhold funds.

The dispute reached the
Supreme Court after conflicting rulings by U.S. appeals courts.

Appeals courts in Cincinnati and Washington,
D.C., upheld the individual
mandate. An appeals court in Atlanta
struck it down, but refused to invalidate the rest of the law. An appeals court
in Virginia
ruled the mandate could not be decided until 2015, when the penalties for not
having insurance are imposed.

The Supreme Court cases are
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, No. 11-393; U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida,
No. 11-398; and Florida
v. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 11-400.

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